C
Chad Harris
That's what veto overides are for. Every business Poppy bought for Daddy was
run into the ground by Georgie. Everything eaten, worn, and including all
medical care for the still very promiscuous twins was paid for by Poppy's
oil.
October 3, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Sinking in a Swamp Full of Blackwater
By MAUREEN DOWD
Washington
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster," Nietzsche said. "And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss
gazes also into you."
We're gazing into the abyss all right, and Blackwater is gazing back.
Besides having an army for hire, brave kids who are paid to fight so that
most Americans are not personally touched by war, we have the real
mercenaries. And they're a spooky cadre, careening outside the laws of Iraq,
the United States and the military.
President Bush continues to preach that we must defeat the "dark ideology"
of extremists with "a more hopeful vision."
But the compromises W. makes to slog on in Iraq, be it with warlords,
dictators or out-of-control contractors, are spreading a dark stain on
America's image.
"Blackwater appears to have fostered a culture of shoot first and sometimes
kill, and then ask the questions," said Representative Elijah Cummings, a
Democrat, yesterday at a House hearing.
The Times reports today that Blackwater's explanation of an incident in
Baghdad on Sept. 16 that left 17 dead and 24 wounded is sketchy.
It seems as though a bullet struck an Iraqi man driving his mother to pick
up his father, a pathologist, at the hospital. The dead man's weight, The
Times reports, "probably remained on the accelerator and propelled the car
forward" toward a Blackwater convoy.
Blackwater guards then unleashed a spray of gunfire and explosives, even
though witnesses did not see anyone shooting at the American convoy and even
though Iraqis were turning their cars around and escaping the scene.
Newsweek quotes the Iraqi national police as saying that Blackwater vehicles
"opened fire crazily and randomly, without any reason."
The Blackwater desperados are a sinister symbol of how little progress we've
made in Iraq, that V.I.P.'s - or "packages," as the contractors call them -
can't make a move in the country without the high-priced hired guns of the
State Department.
Americans have been antimercenary since the British sent 30,000 German
Hessians after George Washington in the Revolutionary War.
But W. outsourced his presidency to Cheney and Rummy, and Cheney and Rummy
went to war on the cheap and outsourced large chunks of the Iraq occupation
to Halliburton and Blackwater. The American taxpayer got gouged, and so did
the American reputation.
The mercenaries inflame Iraqis even as Gen. David Petraeus tries to win
their trust.
Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee, summoned the 38-year-old crew-cut chairman of Blackwater, Erik
Prince, to defend his private security company yesterday.
Once there was the military-industrial complex. Now we have the
mercenary-evangelical complex.
Mr. Prince, a former intern to the first President Bush and a former Navy
Seal, is from a well-to-do and well-connected Republican family from
Michigan.
He and his father both have close ties to conservative Christian groups. His
sister was a Pioneer for W., raising $100,000 in 2004, and Erik Prince has
given more than $225,000 to Republicans.
Blackwater, in turn, has been the beneficiary of $1 billion in federal
contracts, including a no-bid contract with the State Department worth
hundreds of millions.
Mr. Waxman yesterday called the State Department "Blackwater's enabler." His
committee staff summarized State Department reports revealing a cascade of
Blackwater trouble.
"In a high-profile incident in December 2006, a drunken Blackwater
contractor killed the guard of Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi. Within
36 hours after the shooting, the State Department had allowed Blackwater to
transport the Blackwater contractor out of Iraq."
The State Department chargé d'affaires "suggested a $250,000 payment to the
guard's family, but the Department's Diplomatic Security Service said this
was too much and could cause Iraqis to 'try to get killed.' " In the end,
they agreed on a $15,000 payment.
"The State Department took a similar approach," the report stated, "upon
receiving reports that Blackwater shooters killed an innocent Iraqi, except
that in this case, the State Department requested only a $5,000 payment to
'put this unfortunate matter behind us quickly.' "
Mr. Prince was pressed by Representative Paul Hodes about the penalty paid
by the Blackwater employee who, while drunk and off-duty at a Christmas
party, killed the Iraqi guard.
The man was fired. And he had to pay his own airfare home and forfeit his
bonuses, amounting to a loss of about $14,697 - slightly less than the
amount paid to the family of the Iraqi he blew away.
October 3, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Et Tu, Toyota?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
What is it about Michigan that seems to encourage assisted suicide?
That is all I can think watching Michigan congressmen and senators, led by
Representative John Dingell, doing their best imitations of Jack Kevorkian
and once again trying to water down efforts by Congress to legislate
improved mileage standards for Detroit in the latest draft energy bill.
Look, I get pork-barrel politics. I understand senators from oil states
protecting the windfall profits of oil companies. Ditto for farm subsidies.
It's an old story: Protect my winnings, and I'll reward you with campaign
contributions. I get it. I get it.
What I don't get is empty-barrel politics - Michigan lawmakers year after
year shielding Detroit from pressure to innovate on higher mileage
standards, even though Detroit's failure to sell more energy-efficient
vehicles has clearly contributed to its brush with bankruptcy, its loss of
market share to Toyota and Honda - whose fleets beat all U.S. automakers in
fuel economy in 2007 - and its loss of jobs. G.M. today has 73,000 working
U.A.W. members, compared with 225,000 a decade ago. Last year, Toyota
overtook G.M. as the world's biggest automaker.
Thank you, Michigan delegation! The people of Japan thank you as well.
But assisting Detroit's suicide seems to be contagious. Everyone wants to
get in on it, including Toyota. Toyota, which pioneered the
industry-leading, 50-miles-per-gallon Prius hybrid, has joined with the Big
Three U.S. automakers in lobbying against the tougher mileage standards in
the Senate version of the draft energy bill.
Now why would Toyota, which has used the Prius to brand itself as the
greenest car company, pull such a stunt? Is it because Toyota wants to slow
down innovation in Detroit on more energy efficient vehicles, which Toyota
already dominates, while also keeping mileage room to build giant pickup
trucks, like the Toyota Tundra, at the gas-guzzler end of the U.S. market?
"Toyota wants to keep its green halo and beat G.M. in the big trucks, too,"
said Deron Lovaas, vehicles expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"As the world's largest automaker and inventor of the best-selling hybrid
car, Toyota has a responsibility to lead, follow or get out of the way as
Congress debates the first substantial fuel-economy boost in decades.
Shamefully, Toyota has joined forces with older automakers that are getting
their lunch handed to them in the marketplace, in part because they've
consistently shunned fuel efficiency."
Irv Miller, a Toyota vice president, used the company's corporate blog to
refute charges that it is "trying to move America backward on gas mileage."
"Nothing could be further from the truth," he said, because Toyota also
favors improved mileage standards.
Not so fast. Here are the facts: Thanks to the Michigan delegation, U.S.
mileage standards for passenger car fleets have been frozen at 27.5 miles
per gallon since 1985. Light trucks are even worse. The Senate energy bill
calls for U.S. automakers to achieve a corporate average fuel economy of 35
m.p.g. by 2020. The Big Three and Toyota are lobbying to kill the Senate
version and replace it with a loophole-laden increase to 32 to 35 m.p.g. by
2022. (Only the U.S. auto industry would try to postpone innovation.) The
difference between the two is millions of gallons of gas.
Don't be fooled. Japan and Europe already have much better mileage standards
for their auto fleets than the U.S. They both have many vehicles that could
meet the U.S. goal for 2020 today, and they are committed to increasing
their fleet standards toward 40 m.p.g. and above in the coming decade. So
Toyota, in effect, is lobbying to keep U.S. standards - in 2022 - well
behind what Japan's will be.
Representative Edward Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the House
Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said to me that
Toyota could meet a 35 m.p.g. standard in Japan and Europe today, "but
here - even though they bombard Americans with ads about how energy
efficient Toyota is - they are fighting the 35 m.p.g. standard for 2020."
Mr. Markey said he has tried to persuade Toyota that "a lot of people have
bought Priuses or Camry hybrids to fight global warming and reduce our
dependence on foreign oil" and "they would be shocked to find out" that
Toyota is lobbying against the highest m.p.g. standards for America.
Sad. If Toyota were to take the lead on this front, it could enhance its own
reputation and spur the whole U.S. auto industry to become more globally
competitive. Hey, Toyota, if you are going to become the biggest U.S.
automaker, could you at least bring to America your best practices - the
ones that made you the world leader - instead of prolonging our worst
practices? We have enough people helping us commit suicide.
CH
<kevpan815@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:eJ9yYjhBIHA.912@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> ANN: President Bush Vetoes SCHIP Bill, Just FYI.
>
run into the ground by Georgie. Everything eaten, worn, and including all
medical care for the still very promiscuous twins was paid for by Poppy's
oil.
October 3, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Sinking in a Swamp Full of Blackwater
By MAUREEN DOWD
Washington
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster," Nietzsche said. "And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss
gazes also into you."
We're gazing into the abyss all right, and Blackwater is gazing back.
Besides having an army for hire, brave kids who are paid to fight so that
most Americans are not personally touched by war, we have the real
mercenaries. And they're a spooky cadre, careening outside the laws of Iraq,
the United States and the military.
President Bush continues to preach that we must defeat the "dark ideology"
of extremists with "a more hopeful vision."
But the compromises W. makes to slog on in Iraq, be it with warlords,
dictators or out-of-control contractors, are spreading a dark stain on
America's image.
"Blackwater appears to have fostered a culture of shoot first and sometimes
kill, and then ask the questions," said Representative Elijah Cummings, a
Democrat, yesterday at a House hearing.
The Times reports today that Blackwater's explanation of an incident in
Baghdad on Sept. 16 that left 17 dead and 24 wounded is sketchy.
It seems as though a bullet struck an Iraqi man driving his mother to pick
up his father, a pathologist, at the hospital. The dead man's weight, The
Times reports, "probably remained on the accelerator and propelled the car
forward" toward a Blackwater convoy.
Blackwater guards then unleashed a spray of gunfire and explosives, even
though witnesses did not see anyone shooting at the American convoy and even
though Iraqis were turning their cars around and escaping the scene.
Newsweek quotes the Iraqi national police as saying that Blackwater vehicles
"opened fire crazily and randomly, without any reason."
The Blackwater desperados are a sinister symbol of how little progress we've
made in Iraq, that V.I.P.'s - or "packages," as the contractors call them -
can't make a move in the country without the high-priced hired guns of the
State Department.
Americans have been antimercenary since the British sent 30,000 German
Hessians after George Washington in the Revolutionary War.
But W. outsourced his presidency to Cheney and Rummy, and Cheney and Rummy
went to war on the cheap and outsourced large chunks of the Iraq occupation
to Halliburton and Blackwater. The American taxpayer got gouged, and so did
the American reputation.
The mercenaries inflame Iraqis even as Gen. David Petraeus tries to win
their trust.
Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee, summoned the 38-year-old crew-cut chairman of Blackwater, Erik
Prince, to defend his private security company yesterday.
Once there was the military-industrial complex. Now we have the
mercenary-evangelical complex.
Mr. Prince, a former intern to the first President Bush and a former Navy
Seal, is from a well-to-do and well-connected Republican family from
Michigan.
He and his father both have close ties to conservative Christian groups. His
sister was a Pioneer for W., raising $100,000 in 2004, and Erik Prince has
given more than $225,000 to Republicans.
Blackwater, in turn, has been the beneficiary of $1 billion in federal
contracts, including a no-bid contract with the State Department worth
hundreds of millions.
Mr. Waxman yesterday called the State Department "Blackwater's enabler." His
committee staff summarized State Department reports revealing a cascade of
Blackwater trouble.
"In a high-profile incident in December 2006, a drunken Blackwater
contractor killed the guard of Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi. Within
36 hours after the shooting, the State Department had allowed Blackwater to
transport the Blackwater contractor out of Iraq."
The State Department chargé d'affaires "suggested a $250,000 payment to the
guard's family, but the Department's Diplomatic Security Service said this
was too much and could cause Iraqis to 'try to get killed.' " In the end,
they agreed on a $15,000 payment.
"The State Department took a similar approach," the report stated, "upon
receiving reports that Blackwater shooters killed an innocent Iraqi, except
that in this case, the State Department requested only a $5,000 payment to
'put this unfortunate matter behind us quickly.' "
Mr. Prince was pressed by Representative Paul Hodes about the penalty paid
by the Blackwater employee who, while drunk and off-duty at a Christmas
party, killed the Iraqi guard.
The man was fired. And he had to pay his own airfare home and forfeit his
bonuses, amounting to a loss of about $14,697 - slightly less than the
amount paid to the family of the Iraqi he blew away.
October 3, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Et Tu, Toyota?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
What is it about Michigan that seems to encourage assisted suicide?
That is all I can think watching Michigan congressmen and senators, led by
Representative John Dingell, doing their best imitations of Jack Kevorkian
and once again trying to water down efforts by Congress to legislate
improved mileage standards for Detroit in the latest draft energy bill.
Look, I get pork-barrel politics. I understand senators from oil states
protecting the windfall profits of oil companies. Ditto for farm subsidies.
It's an old story: Protect my winnings, and I'll reward you with campaign
contributions. I get it. I get it.
What I don't get is empty-barrel politics - Michigan lawmakers year after
year shielding Detroit from pressure to innovate on higher mileage
standards, even though Detroit's failure to sell more energy-efficient
vehicles has clearly contributed to its brush with bankruptcy, its loss of
market share to Toyota and Honda - whose fleets beat all U.S. automakers in
fuel economy in 2007 - and its loss of jobs. G.M. today has 73,000 working
U.A.W. members, compared with 225,000 a decade ago. Last year, Toyota
overtook G.M. as the world's biggest automaker.
Thank you, Michigan delegation! The people of Japan thank you as well.
But assisting Detroit's suicide seems to be contagious. Everyone wants to
get in on it, including Toyota. Toyota, which pioneered the
industry-leading, 50-miles-per-gallon Prius hybrid, has joined with the Big
Three U.S. automakers in lobbying against the tougher mileage standards in
the Senate version of the draft energy bill.
Now why would Toyota, which has used the Prius to brand itself as the
greenest car company, pull such a stunt? Is it because Toyota wants to slow
down innovation in Detroit on more energy efficient vehicles, which Toyota
already dominates, while also keeping mileage room to build giant pickup
trucks, like the Toyota Tundra, at the gas-guzzler end of the U.S. market?
"Toyota wants to keep its green halo and beat G.M. in the big trucks, too,"
said Deron Lovaas, vehicles expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"As the world's largest automaker and inventor of the best-selling hybrid
car, Toyota has a responsibility to lead, follow or get out of the way as
Congress debates the first substantial fuel-economy boost in decades.
Shamefully, Toyota has joined forces with older automakers that are getting
their lunch handed to them in the marketplace, in part because they've
consistently shunned fuel efficiency."
Irv Miller, a Toyota vice president, used the company's corporate blog to
refute charges that it is "trying to move America backward on gas mileage."
"Nothing could be further from the truth," he said, because Toyota also
favors improved mileage standards.
Not so fast. Here are the facts: Thanks to the Michigan delegation, U.S.
mileage standards for passenger car fleets have been frozen at 27.5 miles
per gallon since 1985. Light trucks are even worse. The Senate energy bill
calls for U.S. automakers to achieve a corporate average fuel economy of 35
m.p.g. by 2020. The Big Three and Toyota are lobbying to kill the Senate
version and replace it with a loophole-laden increase to 32 to 35 m.p.g. by
2022. (Only the U.S. auto industry would try to postpone innovation.) The
difference between the two is millions of gallons of gas.
Don't be fooled. Japan and Europe already have much better mileage standards
for their auto fleets than the U.S. They both have many vehicles that could
meet the U.S. goal for 2020 today, and they are committed to increasing
their fleet standards toward 40 m.p.g. and above in the coming decade. So
Toyota, in effect, is lobbying to keep U.S. standards - in 2022 - well
behind what Japan's will be.
Representative Edward Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the House
Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said to me that
Toyota could meet a 35 m.p.g. standard in Japan and Europe today, "but
here - even though they bombard Americans with ads about how energy
efficient Toyota is - they are fighting the 35 m.p.g. standard for 2020."
Mr. Markey said he has tried to persuade Toyota that "a lot of people have
bought Priuses or Camry hybrids to fight global warming and reduce our
dependence on foreign oil" and "they would be shocked to find out" that
Toyota is lobbying against the highest m.p.g. standards for America.
Sad. If Toyota were to take the lead on this front, it could enhance its own
reputation and spur the whole U.S. auto industry to become more globally
competitive. Hey, Toyota, if you are going to become the biggest U.S.
automaker, could you at least bring to America your best practices - the
ones that made you the world leader - instead of prolonging our worst
practices? We have enough people helping us commit suicide.
CH
<kevpan815@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:eJ9yYjhBIHA.912@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> ANN: President Bush Vetoes SCHIP Bill, Just FYI.
>